The Last Patrol by Keith Billington

Author:Keith Billington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
ISBN: 9781927575826
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Published: 2014-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Lost and Cold

After their trail breaker left them, the four men of Inspector Fitzgerald’s patrol found that the difficulties of the trail continued unabated. They had to cut their way through brush and driftwood, which twice prevented them from following the creek, and by the time they reached the Wind River, the dogs were just about played out. Here the snow was soft and deep, and to add to their troubles, as Fitzgerald reported in his diary, the temperature had dropped to minus fifty-five degrees Celsius, and the slight headwind made the cold penetrate their normally warm clothing.

Frostbite afflicted some of the men but not enough to cause them concern, and when they came to open water on the Wind River, all thoughts of frostbite vanished as they sought a place to cross without getting themselves or their dogs wet. Water appears on top of the ice when either the ice cracks and the pressure of the water beneath it is forced upward or the ice freezes to the gravel at the bottom and water from tributary creeks or mountain springs runs out over it. The water could be either centimetres or metres deep and at times may not even have any ice beneath it at all, depending upon the drainage around the creek. It will often take days to freeze over, and meanwhile it will be hissing and cracking in the sub-zero temperatures. And to make matters worse, sometimes an ice fog will develop above it.

At last, after passing Mount Deception, they managed to reach the Little Wind River, but patches of open water still plagued them. They still had to avoid getting the dogs’ feet wet in the intense cold because this could quickly cripple them and they would be unable to pull the sleds.

By January 10 the temperature had moderated to a mere minus twenty-eight degrees, but fortunately there had been enough cold weather before that to finally freeze the stretches of open water. However, the dogs now experienced some difficulty pulling the heavy sleds as they tried to get a grip with their claws on the smooth icy surface of the river. The men also had to tread carefully, testing the thickness of the ice as they went, as it would have been deadly if they or their dogs fell through it.

Now the weather improved daily, and apart from one day when they all got their feet wet in some overflow, the travelling was good. Normally Inspector Fitzgerald would have been happy with this turn of events, but something happened that took his mind off such mundane things as the weather. The men had stopped for a noon break, and he decided to send the guide, Special Constable Carter, on ahead to look for the portage that they should take. Three hours later Carter returned to report that he could not find it.

The patrol continued on up the river, but they soon found that it was getting very narrow, an indication that they must have travelled too far up it and missed the portage.

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